I’m sure I’ll get a hundred indignant reasons why this is totally irrelevant to the Georgia-Florida game, but it turns out that over the last five years the team which has to travel the greater distance to a neutral site bowl game wins more than fifteen percent of the time. Quite a bit more, in fact.

In the coming college bowl season, San Diego State plays in San Diego, Hawaii makes the long hike to Honolulu from its main campus in Manoa, and Maryland might as well take the Metro to its game at Washington’s RFK Stadium.

But all that shouldn’t discourage teams like Tulsa, Boston College and Stanford, all of which will trek more than 2,500 miles for their final games. In 163 bowl games over the past five years, the team that was forced to travel farther is 83-80.

Other than Vanderbilt finally getting into a bowl game a couple of years ago even though it was in Nashville, I think a lot of times it doesn’t feel like a big deal if you’re playing a bowl at home. The team coming in probably feels like they’re having much more of a “bowl”-type experience, whereas the home team has already seen the sights, the stadium, and probably doesn’t wake up and realize they’re in a battle until it’s too late.

You mean like the Atlanta Sugar Bowl vs WVU? The fact of the matter is that the team from the great distance has nothing else to do but focus on preparation….very few distractions.yes, an excuse, but it’s a valid one assuming the teams are fairly equally matched..